Sanaa Nights Hotel

... 1606;ا الحنا 06; هنا القرّ 76;ى هنا الرحم 15;
هنا الشري 93;ة من مشكات 07;ا لمعت هنا العدا 04;ة وا ...

... day, never paying more than $20 for a hotel room; internet only 30 cents per hour 2. Not a single sign of anything related to Christmas, unless you consider the frankincense, gold, and myrrh for sale in the old souq 3. Sana'a is the most traditional capital city I had ever visited, at least in the old city 4. So glad I stayed in the old part of Sana' at a traditional tower house cum hotel. My experience and impression of Yemen would have been vastly ...

... were no shared taxis going up the hill to Kawkaban, so I walked the steep stone steps that had been reconstructed with UNESCO's help a few years back.. It was a pleasant climb but tiring, and it was a very nice hike as long as I ignored all of the trash along the way. I had the trail all to myself other than a father walking down with his wailing daughter, who wasn't much older than Sophia. I shuddered to think of taking Sophia on such steep stone steps. In ...

... is Arabia) there are many flash floods because of the area's arid nature. So this channel diverts the run-off from flooding the city. When it's not raining, people use it as a thoroughfare. Interesting multipurpose use. Our first stop today was at Wadi Dhahr just 15 kilometers outside Sana'a to visit the five-storey Palace of the Rock: yes, a palace built on a rock. As we left the main road, I understood why it was ...

... Yemen on vacation everyone was quizzical if not skeptical or concerned. Even to many Arabs, Yemen is the black sheep of the Middle East often cited as being backwards, too traditional, or trapped in the Middle Ages. But Yemen's time-capsuled culture recalls the allure that Orientalists had for the Middle East during the 18th century. This same allure is noted by Tom Downey of The New York Times when he describes Yemen as ...

... appeared through the mist. As soon as we walked through the gates, it felt like we had entered a ghost town. We didn't come across a single person nor did we hear any voices or see a sign of life. Our guide, Assam reassured us that the village was not abandoned. The villagers were just out in the fields or working in town (probably Manakha) and had not come home yet. We wandered through the village some more until we reached the highest ...

... and various soups and so on. I left early on Wednesday on the Hodeidah bus, got off at Maghreba and then made my way to Hajjarah via Manakha. I spent the first day there walking around a number of nearby villages with a Croation chap called Marcus whom I met in the old town. The town itself is perched on the top of a cliff, walled round and only accessible by a steep stairway. Outside the walls lie a few buildings that once made up the Jewish quarter ...

... the couragious British explorer (excuse the tortology) Freya Stark as 'The Manhattan of the Desert" since all the mud buildings, enclosed entirely by the city walls, are eight, ten or more stories high. The waste from the toilets is directed seperately according to whether it is solid or liquid. It soon dries, and the former can then be used as fuel for cooking fires - really rather an efficient and sensible way of dealing with it in a city where so many buildings are ...

... a good plan. So we drove to another part of town and walked into the office of another bus company. My driver went to the window and told the man that he wanted one ticket for me. "Ok," said the man behind the window. "What's her name?" "Lindsay," my taxi driver answered. "Lindsay? Is she Yemeni?" "Yeah, look at her," my driver said, motioning to me. "Ok. What's her last name?" "McCormick." "McCormick? Are you sure she's ...

... to look inside the buidlings, which are normally out of bounds here to non-Muslims. After the meal, we went to Adil's house and chewed qat for several hours, discussing everything from religion to politics. Adil is extremely wise, and was very open-minded to our views, though firm in his own convictions. Generous, courteous and wise, he really does typify the virtues that Arabs are famous for and is a brilliant teacher to boot. After this, I met Abdullah at the Bab al ...